6 Situations Where Content Rewriting Can Help Your Marketing

Computer showing content being rewritten

As much as I like to avoid cliches, there’s truth in them, and sometimes they’re just the best way of saying something.

We all know — quality content is king.

As noted by Forbes, “It’s what separates the winners from the losers online; it’s what will help your site rank well in the search engines, what will naturally attract high-quality inbound links and what will help you build trust, credibility and authority with your audience.”

That’s a tall order for any digital strategy, made more so by the fact that content doesn’t last forever — what once generated backlinks and visitor numbers worthy of social media humblebrags can quickly become stale and unappealing.

But how do you know when it’s time to shift gears and consider content rewriting to get your website or blog back on track?

Here are six situations that call for digital do-overs.

You’ve Changed, Man

Gif of Bart Simpson telling Homer he's changed, highlighting that content rewriting is necessary if a company changes significantly.

Change is inevitable. Maybe it’s your corporate focus. Maybe you’ve updated your mission statement or branched out into new industry verticals.

Guess what?

That “perfect” blog post you purchased last year isn’t doing the job. Sure, you could spend the time and money creating an entirely new post, or you could hire an article rewriter to put a fresh spin on your content while adding updated information.

Think of it like this: There’s no reason to toss quality articles, but their value shifts over time. If your company incorporates big changes, make sure your content follows suit.

ALSO: 3 Reasons Why Spring Calls For a Content Refresh 

Content Rewriting: Readin’ for the Season?

Targeted copy outperforms generic content. This is especially true as the months-long period of the “holiday season” emerges from its food coma each year — your site needs relevant, seasonal keyword-driven content to help capture user interest during this period

If most of your content is mostly working, it’s probably not worth the cost of complete text rewriting just to hop on the holiday bandwagon.

Worth your time, though, are quick rewrites and updates that leverage what you’ve already got to create seasonally-themed web copy, product descriptions or gift-buying guides.

Performance Problems

Image showing a bull in a business meeting saying he's "bullish" despite declining SEO performance
SEO performance drops can happen to any company, and so can a love for terrible puns.

It can happen to any company. Suddenly your SEO numbers aren’t up to their usual standards and unique visitor numbers are dropping.

First step? Find your problem. It might be:

  • New Competitors Up in Your Business: The nature of digital business makes it possible for new competitors to spring up seemingly overnight. If your SEO numbers drop, it’s time for a competitive SEO analysis. If you’re not number one, opt for a competitive content do-over.
  • The Smell of Stale Content: Fresh content drives SEO. Stale content — even if it’s still relevant — limits search engine exposure. Keep things fresh with periodic content rewrites.
  • Major Search Engine Algorithm Updates: Big search engines like Google occasionally change how they rank and list page results. The caveat? They don’t always make these changes obvious (or public). If you notice tanking rankings with no other cause, be sure to check with a tool like SEMrush’s search sensor, which will tell you if there’s been an algorithm change and what it seems to target.  If the change targets site content (and it often will), learn what you need to change and consider content writing with a focus on the new reality of SEO.

Break it Down

It’s worth paying for long-form, high-quality outsourced content such as white papers and case studies prepared by research firms and professional freelancers: You get above-average textual content that’s data-rich and brand-driven to help your business perform.

The challenge?

Many readers won’t wade through long-form studies and surveys; they want bite-size readable content that satisfies their desire for info without wasting their time. Here, high-quality content rewriting services can help break existing resources down into multiple assets. For example, you could turn a 2000-word white paper into four or five blog posts or break a case study into multiple articles.

Repurposing content presents a huge opportunity to make it more digestible for readers and help you extract more value from the investment you’ve made in creating it. Many content marketers report repurposing a single piece of content more than 10 times.

ALSO: Repurposing Content to Drive SEO Results

Inherited Issues

Maybe you’ve inherited subpar content from another marketer or content that was written for a different age. Often, the domain age — rather than any in-text value — makes this content worth keeping.

But what’s the best strategy to make use of this content?

In some cases, a quick pass with proofreading tools or paraphrasing tools can snap this content into shape. In others, you may need full-on rewrites to preserve the pages’s domain age but deliver readable text.

Regardless of the level of work required, rewriting this older content presents an opportunity for you to take under performing content and make it shine.

Looking For Budget Friendly Content

The need for fresh, relevant content is more present than ever. And, in a pinch, a company light on time or budget might look for easy ways to get content to promote.

There’s no such thing as free content — at least not content of value. While free online article spinners promise something for nothing, offering to create new articles from your existing content, you’re better served improving content than simply imitating its style.

Do a quick search, and you’ll come across a host of article rewriting tools or “article spinners” that (for a low, low fee!) will repurpose old articles by paraphrasing current content, inserting synonyms where possible and effectively giving your digital assets a second life.

Google search result showing multiple article spinning tools
There are a number of article spinning tools available, but most don’t produce content that will perform well for you.

As noted by Search Engine Journal, however, these article spinning services often deliver unreadable results.

For example, one synonym for the word “digital” is “numerary.”

If your original content dives into the need for “digital transformation” but the text spinner spits out a piece about “numerary revolution,” your SEO isn’t going anywhere but down. And, your readers are going to be very confused.

In practice, rewriting content presents an alternative to risky methods of getting low-cost content such as content spinning. This means tapping experienced article rewriters to repurpose old content but add new insights, in effect keeping what works without (effectively) ripping off your own resources.

Wrapping It Up

I’ve gone through a number of reasons why you might consider rewriting existing content, but fundamentally, I want to stress that it’s a powerful tool to help your content program perform better. Whatever the reason you decide to rewrite content, it gives you the opportunity to learn from what’s worked and hasn’t worked with the existing content and create something better.

If you’ve decided that it’s time to spruce up your content, be sure to check out our wide range of content creation services.

Are there any other situations we didn’t cover that would warrant rewriting content? Let me know in the comments.

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Eric has been working in marketing and product management for over a decade with companies in the software, eCommerce and content creation spaces. He’s particularly drawn to both content marketing and SEO and is excited that the two areas are increasingly converging. While he’s pretty serious about marketing, he does love to drop a great dad joke on occasion.

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